


trouble in the heartlands

by rainbowagnes



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Convenience Store, Gen, Jack Daniels, Modern AU, Post-Relationship, Ramen, if isn't slightly tragic and unspeakably awkward is it REALLY hen solo????, ish, some minor references to the OT if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 11:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14893509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowagnes/pseuds/rainbowagnes
Summary: Han Solo has got to stop running into his ex-boyfriend in the checkout line.He's not sure his heart (or his dignity) can take it anymore.





	trouble in the heartlands

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Solo! I apparently have a lot of FEELINGS about it, because the word doc I started up for Solo fics is currently at 23 pages. Yikes. 
> 
> (I have a much longer band AU thingamajig coming up. At some point. In the meantime, have this monster that I started last night as a short lil drabble that kind of got away from me.) In the meantime, enjoy maximum exes angsting/awkwardness!
> 
> Title from the incomparable rock anthem "Badlands" by Bruce Springsteen.

**November, 1975**

There’s really nothing in the world that says single and lonely like standing in the check out line on Thanksgiving evening with a flat pack of dried ramen, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and a frozen turkey dinner.

(The instant ramen is his usual Thursday purchase, but the frozen turkey dinner is for festivity, and the alcohol is because of how goddamn sorry for himself he feels right now.)

He’s counted out the change in his pocket three times, done the mental math of the tax before he reached the check out because god damn, there’s been enough times in his life when he’s been short at the end of it, scrounging for pennies in his pockets.

He thought he could count on solitude at 6:30 pm on Thanksgiving day, but someone comes up behind him and throws a solitary bag of marshmallows on the till.

Someone with a very familiar set of hands, perfectly manicured nails and all.

“If it isn’t the famous Lando Calrissian.”

“Ham Solo!”

Lando is impeccably dressed, as always, wearing dark jeans and a button-up shirt with a fall leaf design and some kind of a massive, almost cloak-like, knit cardigan that would look ridiculously terrible on Han but on him just works. Like everything does.

(Han’s wearing a different flannel shirt than yesterday. He thinks. Hopes.)

Lando’s eyes flit over Han’s shopping. He tries not to notice Lando’s eyelashes. Or his lips. Or .. . . anything else about him.

“Nutritionally balanced, I see.”

“Hey! The only thing you’re buying is a bag of marshmallows.”

“These are for my mother’s famous sweet potato casserole, if you must know. Lilah and Janie stole the first bag and now she’s sans marshmallows for her annual cookoff-slash-cage match with my Aunt Tia. And so I must play the part of the dutiful son,” he finishes, over dramatically tapping the bag of marshmallows.

Han vaguely remembers that Lilah and Janie are two of Lando’s nieces. The whole situation’s domestic enough that it stabs at his insides in a wierd, uncomfortable way. Like he has feelings.

The guy in front of Han finishes paying for his approximately million rounds of ammunition- god bless America!- and the cashier starts to ring up Han’s shit.

“3.85.”

“Wait a minute. It’s supposed to be 3.35.”

“3.85. If you can’t pay, put something back.”

He does’t have the extra fifty cents. What he does have is a bent coupon book he shoves at the cashier.

“3.35. Look, the noodles are on sale.”

“The Sizzling Shrimp Surprise and the Rockin’ Wasabi were on sale. The Picante Beef, as a premium flavour, are not.”

Han’s about to fight past the overwhelming wave of humiliation at having this drama play out in front of the ex-boyfriend he has not, in fact, gotten over yet emotionally, and swap the Picante Beef for a case of Rockin’ Wasabi, when Lando places two quarters on the till.

“Should cover it.”

“I don’t need-“

“It’s fine-“

“I don’t need it.”

“Jesus, Han. You don’t have to live your entire life in some kind of fucking self-impost "lone gunman" exile. That’s not the way that humans work.”

And suddenly they’re back in a slightly different argument in a very different place, and Lando is folding his stuff to leave and Han is saying things he will never, ever, stop regretting.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and shoves his stuff into a plastic bag to leave.

“Hey,” Lando calls after him, “you looking for somewhere to spend Thanksgiving?”

It’s a question and an invitation and Han doesn’t which is the worse coward’s way- ignoring it, or taking it up and letting the disaster start all over again, this time with bigger stakes and sharper knives and deeper wounds.

He chooses the former, and trips over a display of fake plastic pumpkins on the way out.

 

 

**December, 1981**

Sometimes, the entire story of the disaster can be spread out on the conveyor belt: gauze, burn cream, disinfectant, and Lando Calrissian’s ex-boyfriend, standing and looking sheepish under the glaring supermarket lights, with a splotchy red hand he keeps waving around periodically.

(Sometimes, another story is spread out beside it, on the other side of the divider, on Lando’s side of the conveyor belt. Breath mints and a box of condoms and a small bouquet of those supermarket roses.)

“You’re sure you’re fine, Han?” He doesn’t even bother with wildly mispronouncing his name. “Because whatever happened to your hand, that looks like it needs actual medical attention. Not whatever shit you’re going to try.”

“I’m. Fine.,” he insists through gritted teeth, and given how overdramatic Han usually is, his forced placidity tells Lando that it hurts like hell.

“What happened?”

“The usual badass stuff, you know. Got into a fist fight with some guys next to a tortilla chip factory, things got ugly, had to take it to one of the vats of boiling oil-“

“Calm down, friend.” Lando does some quick mental math. “Fifth night of Hannukah, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

(“Not like, a major holiday or anything,” he remembers Han saying, “but it’s the only one that’s got my name in it- well, kinda, sorta, if you really mispronounce the first ch- plus there’s fried stuff and culturally sanctioned gambling.”)

“You burn yourself frying?” He has to laugh, just a little. “What’s changed?”

“SOLO!,” a voice screams across the mostly deserted row of check out stations. The voice belongs to a pale woman, wearing a long white skirt and a distinctly annoyed expression. “The pharmacist said that only an idiot could mess up applying this stuff. Your hand should be fine. Probably”

She wedges her way past Lando, slams a small box with a long medical name on the till, and then snaps her purse open.

“I can pay-“

One look of her narrowed brown eyes and Han shuts up.

“Y’think I can get a robot hand like Luke’s?”

“Luke lost his entire hand as a combat injury. You lightly burned yours trying to copy some trick you saw Julia Child do once because you couldn’t find a spatula.”

Han waves his hand in front of Leia’s face. “What part of this looks lightly burned? It hurts like hell.”

“Yeah, well, so do breakups and periods, but you don’t hear people asking for robot appendages to make up for those.”

There’s something familiar in the way they bicker, but also in the way Leia wraps her arm around his shoulders and buries her head against his neck while she laughs, even though she’s still also clearly pissed about the magnitude of idiocy involved in the latke incident. Lando decides not to overanalyse it, because even on the surface level it’s enough to stab him in the heart.

When Han introduces them they swap business cards. Leia Organa, City Councilwoman. Lando Calrissian, CEO, Bespin Industries. They’re the kind of people who’d meet at a dinner party or a networking event, somewhere with crudités and boxed white wine in little glasses where they’d take turns schmoozing and cutting at the stuffed shirts and pretentious titles. That’s how, Lando swears, he and Leia Organa were meant to meet. Not here, not in a harshly lit convenience store with massive displays of fake snow and gingerbread-flavoured candy canes, and not both a little in love with Han Solo.

 

**February, 1983**

He’s not sure there’s a clearer visual representation of “single-and-recently-heartbroken” than renting a pile of romantic comedies and buying cookie dough ice cream, but it’s 2 AM and at this point he feels like the only person alive.

The supermarket’s a ghost town, something vaguely macabre about the boxes of Captain Crunch and cans of corn at this hour of the night (morning?) Jesus, he used to be a party boy. This used to be the time that the night got going and the really wild shit started to go down. This used to be the time of night that he waited the rest of the day for. 

Now he’s an adult. Now he’s a respectable adult with a successful energy business and a possibly mayoral bid. When the fuck did that happen?

Now he puzzles over wether to add in a box of Lucky Charms for the morning, before deciding fuck that, he’s an adult now, bread, eggs, and Bloody Mary fixings.

It ends up being a pile of stuff he’s going to have to schlep home. Taxi? But at this time of night? He forgot to bring a reusable bag. Plastic bags? He can practically hear Elle yelling at him.

He’s still in a hazy mood as he drops his stuff onto the conveyor belt, taking care so that the Smirnoff doesn’t roll over the side, when he notices the only other guy in line with him.

Fucking hell, the universe can be weird and cruel.

"Yeah, Leia, I got it, I got it, I'm in the checkout line, anything else you need? Saltines or anything." A pause. "No, of fucking course not! I didn't mean to suggest- Well I got it and we'll get home and we'll talk and- and yeah Yeah. We'll talk." He's mumbling into his .. . cell phone? Since when does he have a cell phone? "Yeah. I love you too." 

"Hen Yolo. Imagine meeting you here.”

Hen Yolo looks even more dazed and stunned than Lando does. He doesn’t even have some snappy but clearly inferior comeback, which is the sign that something _really_ big’s gone down.;

Lando’s eyes flit to the one item Han’s buying, a small shiny box that Han keeps drumming his fingers against tunelessly. Anxiously.

Shit. Something _really_ small, then.

“Oh,” says Lando, because even he can’t really think of how to respond to running into his fucking ex-boyfriend at 2 AM in a convenience story buying a fucking pregnancy test.

(He notices, right then, that Han still has the remnants of the burn scars across the backs of his hands, his knuckles. They look almost floral.) 

“Hey,” says Han.

Instinctively, his hand snatches over to cover the test, eyes darting like cornered prey.

(It’s not beyond Lando’s notice that Councilwoman Leia Organa has become Senator Leia Organa since the last time they met. And who can forget the months of tabloid buzz over her being the secret daughter of President Vader, either?)

(Also: at some point those tabloids are going to get ahold of Han and have a field day. He looks like a doctored-ly terrible paparazzi photo most of the time anyway. And however this current situation plays out, there’s a high likelihood Han’s going to be pulled from the shadows as something more than Senator Organa’s secret boyfriend/occaisonal driver.)

“My lips are sealed, Solo.”

Han nods, distracted, almost bouncing off the balls of his feet, more nervous teenager than the 30-something man he is. He’s projecting enough rays of nervous energy to power an entire city.

The cashier doesn’t spare a glance at what Han’s buying as she rings him up. “Cash or credit?”

“Credit.”

He pulls a sturdy-looking leather wallet that Lando’s never seen before from his jeans pocket and takes out a fancy silver card.

Lando pretends to be shocked. “Credit? Han Solo with a credit card? What are you, moving up in the world? Respectable?”

He ignores Lando, shoves his purchase into a paper bag, and stalks out the door.

Maybe it’s because he’s a goddamn idiot without any sense of self-preservation either, or maybe it’s because he actually goddamn misses the man who was, for years, his best friend, but Lando makes a split decision and dashes out after Han, leaving his place in line and all his groceries still on the till.

“Solo! SOLO! HAAAAN!”

Childish, maybe, but it’s enough to make Han slow down. Not turn around, but slow down, and when he reaches his car, stop.

“What do you want?”

Because they’ve lied to each other enough times before, Lando decides to be honest.

“My old friend back.”

“Fucking hell, Lando, it’s too late for you to come pulling me back into your-“

“Not as we were, clearly. It’s far too late for that.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it definetely is.”

More awkward silence. Lando notes that the Falcon now has a bunch of Leia’s campaign stickers on it and that Han’s done. . . well at least a cursory job at cleaning the inside of it out. He’s taken some of Chewie’s fur off the seats, at least. He’s still got the gold dice.

“Hold out your arm,” Lando finally instructs.

“Why?”

“Because I'm giving you my new number and this is the only way I now you won’t loose it.”

Lando pulls a Sharpie out of his pocket while Han reluctantly rolls back a sleeve. He writes his number on Solo’s arm with big, mildly humiliating strokes, and then scrawls - _Calrissian, CEO Bespin Industries, future mayor_ \- on his wrist, just for slight irritation’s sake.

(If you got rid of of ten years, the pregnancy test, and the parking lot, and added in some terrible pounding music, a disco ball, and some terribly v-cut shirts, this could almost be the first time they met.)

“Thanks. I’ll call you.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

“Who knows? Maybe I’ll send you an invite to one of Leia’s Shabbat dinners. They’re pretty great. All three senator Organas, her brother and whoever his current boyfriend is, her eldritch abomination of a biological father-“

“Really?”

Lando’s one experience with President Vader can only really be quantified as soul-shaking terror, but the image of him sitting down with Leia and Han at a dining table is almost hilarious.

“Nah, he’s serving a life sentence. But come anyway.”

Who knows? It’s a long life. Maybe he will.

“How’r things going for you? The mining thing really took off, didn’t it?”

“Sustainable energy, Solo. It’s made me more money than you could ever dream of-“

“Hey-“

“So I’ve been thinking about what to do with it. Sports car, mansion, creating a network of mentorship opportunities for kids in tech, sustainable development, politics, capes, paying off special interest groups. You know, the usual.”

Han smiles and bites his lip. “Have you changed at all?”

“Yes. Like I said, I’m rich.” He claps Han on the shoulder, just enough to shake the man slightly. “Enough on me. You gotta get home. You gotta get back to Leia.”

He nods and jumps into the Falcon, which rumbles as argumentatively to life as it always does.

“See you around.”

Lando watches the Falcon drive off. He decides that rescuing his groceries from the check-out line isn’t worth it, pulls out his phone, and calls a taxi.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up with prompts/suggestions/general commentary in the comments or at @rainbowagnes on Tumblr
> 
> Comments are almost as good as making the Kessel Run in 13-ish parsecs!


End file.
